Up in Flames
by Grace-Logan
Summary: It's calling them, it's calling them now! It's time to go, now, now, they have to go... Go? Go where?... To that place, you each know the place, that place, their place... Our place... It's calling, will they follow?


Whatever called to them, whatever drove them from their homes that night, out into the never-ending darkness of a new world, they could never know. It was an irresistible urge, a calling they couldn't deny, a change in the air they needed to be at the center of.

 _Tobio, Tooru, Kei, Yuutarou... Come to me_

 _Tooru._ Tooru looked up from his homework, distracted by a calling of his name. Next to him Iwaizumi hunched over his homework diligently working through each problem ahead of him.

 _Tooru!_ He dropped his pencil as the calling thrummed within him and stood from his seat startling Hajime and shattering his concentration.

 _Come._

"I'll be back Iwa-chan." Tooru muttered heading for his door. Iwaizumi looked at him as if he'd grown another head, it was late, almost midnight. Where on earth could he possibly have to go?

Less than a minute later Iwaizumi heard Tooru's front door click shut and his footsteps on the brick path to his gate. He peered out of Tooru's window next to him and watched as he jumped his fence and disappeared into the night. "Where are you going?"

Kei woke with a start, his headphones falling around his neck when he shot up and threw wild glances around his lounge room where he'd fallen asleep earlier that night. The T.V. was flashing a little red number in the bottom right corner of the screen, telling him it would turn off in a minute. Kei it's time. The pounding of a heavy bass reverberated through his skull pulling him forward off the couch.

 _Don't get caught Kei._ He felt the need to be silent, like a ghost, he needed to leave, to reach that place. That place? What place? A place we don't know yet… but we will.

 _Come to me Kei, you know where._

We? Who's we? Kei thought, found himself shoeless and turning the knob of his backdoor. What was going on? Come. The door opened and he stepped out shutting it silently behind him. Nobody saw him leave the house, nobody saw him down the street or around the corner. Street lamps seemed to be few and far between and the side walk, larger than normal casting dark shadows where the light didn't invade. That was his way to that place. To _their_ place.

 _Tobio._ Tobio swung around on his desk chair, pausing the volleyball match he was watching.

 _Tobio._ He dropped his headphones onto his desk and neared his window. He peeked out through his curtains, staring down at the empty street below. His hands fiddled with the latch on his window, his heart beat louder in his chest, thudding against his chest, pushing him forward.

He stepped up onto the windowsill, pushing the sliding pane to the side and out of his way.

 _Come to me._ He dropped onto the roof outcrop under his window and crept to the edge, stopping only when his toes hung off the ledge.

 _Tobio_ … He looked down, made a quick judge of distance and stepped off the roof, crouching when he hit the ground and lunging forward into a roll to his feet. Without a glance behind him he worked up a slow jog to vault his fence and run down the road on the other side barefoot and shirtless.

Yuutarou's eyes slowly opened as if he were waking from a long satisfying slumber and not a quick hour.

 _Yuutarou._ He slipped out of bed, the cold floor striking into the soles of his feet like an electric shock throughout his body.

 _Yuutarou it's time._ He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, walked to his wardrobe, grabbed a shirt, track pants and a jacket and shuffled to his door. He paused as his mind woke up, his hand on his door handle. What was he doing? He should sleep. He turned back to his bed; stepping towards it he heard the call.

 _Yuutarou come._ He spun on his heel back to his door, cracked it open and slipped out into the hall. Tiptoeing to his front door he had the mind to slip on some shoes before he left, leaving the door open wide behind him and ignoring the light suddenly shining from the back of the house.

"Yuutarou!" This call was not heard.

The streets were empty, deserted as if nobody had ever lived there. Silent, cold, empty… It didn't bother them. Turn after turn they twisted their way to a crossroads where they met. Four doors, four people from four different directions and four elegant, white gold pedestals in a square in the middle of an abandoned building.

Each pedestal had on it an object, sitting in its center. On Kageyama's end, a twisted piece of metal breaking off into three spindles winding around each other lay on his pedestals pointy surface, the prongs lifting the scrap from the greater surface area and holding it in place above the others.

Kei's held a wooden ball, textured as if someone had shaped the bark of a tree into a perfect circle and left the indents and imperfections on its surface that held it still from rolling off the pedestal. Rivets up to a centimeter thick carved out the intricate patterns of a tree trunk following no particular groove or direction. They crisscrossed and zigzagged across the balls surface, a seemingly random set of connected lines.

Tooru's pedestal held a single snap of thread, each of its ends pinched in the fingers of a shiny matte black faux hand, each end a different shade, one black and one sliver. Its length pulled into the breeze pushing past it from the doors the boy's single-minded souls had left open. It tugged away from its bonds, never finding release.

Yuutarou's pedestal by far, was the most peculiar. It held two objects propped up on stands they'd use in science class to hold a beaker above a Bunsen burner. Two glass cups rested on top, one frozen the other with a little flame burning in the bottom all-alone.

They each stopped in front of their pedestal, staring holes into the objects sitting on top. Tobio reached out for the metal scrap before the others, only seconds behind him, reached for theirs. _Tobio, Tooru, Yuutarou, Kei_. They sung to the boys, their hands clamping closed on their objects.

 _It's time. It's time!_ The voice was ecstatic as the objects liquefied in their hands and seeped into their skin. Their screams permeated the air, harsh and resounding as they collapsed onto the cold hard metal grates that made the ground floor, their conscious leaving them abandoned in the mysterious warehouse.


End file.
